Uncharted Game Guide

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is not a game about new ideas. Developer Naughty Dog has assembled its borrowed parts with great proficiency to create an action adventure game with momentum, one that is filled with exciting set pieces, a real cinematic scope, and some of the most gorgeous visuals you'll see in a game. 

That Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a game that trades in archetypes is apparent throughout the story. You'll play as Nathan Drake, an independent adventurer with a wry sense of humor who claims to be a descendent of Sir Francis Drake. There are villains as well, including Nathan's dry British counterpart as well as a belligerent pirate captain, though you'll likely find their minions far more threatening. Much of the game takes place in dense jungle environments and a variety of ancient ruins, which the game renders with a nearly photorealistic level of detail. There's also some terrific facial animation, of which you'll see plenty during cutscenes, though you'll catch glimpses of it during gameplay as well. There are two significant concepts in Uncharted that make up most of the game's running time, though they very rarely intersect. There's environment traversal, which will have you leaping across chasms, scrambling up ledges, and swinging on vines to progress through the game. The combat consists mostly of gunplay, and you'll be brandishing a variety of handguns, assault rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers over the course of the game. The game is also fond of those little interactive cutscenes that every God of War and Resident Evil seems to be brimming with these days, and though the novelty wears a little thinner every time they crop up in a game, they still work well enough in Uncharted. The imbalance between the gunplay and the platforming is jarring but forgivable--but the platforming itself works pretty well and looks fantastic thanks to the game's excellent motion-captured animation.